Last weekend I attended the Taking Action for Animals (TAFA) conference conducted by the Humane Society of the United States in Washington, DC. The conference was eye-opening for me in a few ways– the terrible ways that animals are treated and abused, in ways that I as a vegetarian and animal lover never even comprehended, and the fact that the vast, vast majority of conference-goers thought the Democratic Party of the United States holds all the answers to these problems.
I attended the Lobby Day in Congress on Monday, and my state’s Republican senator was dismissed by my state director as something along the lines of “awful, absolutely terrible” on Humane Society issues, yet he was the sponsor of The Great Ape Protection Act in the last Congress and apparently has signed on to many of the Humane Society’s bills. His legislative assistant practically cried when she was told about the horrors of puppy mills.
The new Democratic Senator, by contrast, sent a representative who didn’t flinch an eye when told that horses are being exported for food, that puppies are being abused horribly by breeders, and that companies selling dog fur from China mislabel their products as faux fur. She seemed slightly concerned when told that many chimps have been held in cages for 50 years, without even being experimented on, just to get federal research dollars (the last is my own editorializing, however true it is– the Humane Society of course doesn’t say this). Yet her senator was praised just for being, well, a Democrat.
That’s the kind of attitude that turns a lot of groups– the NRA, the AKC, etc.– away from the Humane Society’s bills. When a Republican does everything but jump up and down and yell, “I love the Humane Society and all legislation it puts forth!”, yet a Democrat gets praised just for deigning to meet with the proles making the rounds on Lobby Day, it kind of shows you why some might oppose the Humane Society’s “agenda” (in quotes because some people seriously think this whole Humane Society thing is one huge conspiracy.) There is absolutely no reason from what I observed for the Humane Society to have such a pro-Democrat, anti-Republican view. Two of the four current Great Ape Protection Act sponsors are Republicans. John Ensign is a huge supporter, as are many Republicans in Congress.
Of course, opposing these bills doesn’t mean you aren’t supporting animal rights, either– more on that in a later post. Stay tuned.
So, that’s my open letter to Humane Society speakers, state directors, and citizen lobbyists. At least try to act non-partisan. Your bills are, and it would benefit your group.
Speaking of which, over the next week, I’ll be blogging about how libertarianism, not Democratic Party-ism, is the solution for helping animals, and how much more would actually get done if we just took a more libertarian approach to helping the animals.
Leave a Reply